Amazon Work-Life Balance Defender: Prior Employer Nearly Killed Me and My Team

theodp writes: New York Times Public Editor Margaret Sullivan questions whether her paper's portrayal of Amazon's brutal workplace was on target, citing a long, passionate response in disagreement from Nick Ciubotariu, a head of infrastructure development at Amazon. Interestingly, Ciubotariu — whose take on Amazon's work-life balance ("I've never worked a single weekend when I didn't want to") was used as Exhibit A by CEO Jeff Bezos to refute the NYT's report — wrote last December of regretting his role as an enabler of his team's "Death March" at a former employer (perhaps Microsoft, judging by Ciubotariu's LinkedIn profile and his essay's HiPo and Vegas references). "I asked if there were any questions," wrote Ciubotariu of a team meeting. "Nadia, one of my Engineers, had one: 'Nick, when will this finally end?' As I looked around the room, I saw 9 completely broken human beings. We had been working over 100 hours a week for the past 2 months. Two of my Engineers had tears on their faces. I did my best to keep from completely breaking down myself. With my voice choking, I looked at everyone, and said: 'This ends right now'." Ciubotariu added, "I hope they can forgive me for being an enabler of their death march, however unwilling, and that I ultimately didn't do enough to stop it. As a 'reward' for all this, I calibrated #1 overall in my organization, and received yet another HiPo nomination and induction, at the cost of a shattered family life, my health, and a broken team. I don't think I ever felt worse in my entire career. If I could give it all back, I would, in an instant, no questions asked. Physically and mentally, I took about a year to heal."

Comments

Department fail

[Anonymous Coward]

The media is treating this like it's a global issue at amazon. It maybe a certain part of the company. For example, Quicken Loans is considered one of the top employers in Michigan. They always win "best place to work" and other ridiculous things. It's widely known that in most departments, they're fine. However, I've worked with several former programmers and they all say it's horrible, understaffed and they insist on insane hours. There's no time to test code, etc. If the programmers all got together and reported to the media with examples, then we'd see a story like Amazons about Quicken Loans. Instead, the rest of the company's great reviews make it sound like a swell place to be.

It's possible amazon has a problem in tech or another department but the people in the warehouse are treated fine. It may not be a global problem. Also, most of the people who say it's great are MANAGERS at amazon. What about the rank and file!

Re:Department fail

[Frosty Piss]

It's possible amazon has a problem in tech or another department but the people in the warehouse are treated fine

News Media, employee blogs, and other sources don't agree with you about Amazon warehouse workers. A simple Intertubes search reveals this reality.

Re:Department fail

[JMJimmy]

It's possible amazon has a problem in tech or another department but the people in the warehouse are treated fine

News Media, employee blogs, and other sources don't agree with you about Amazon warehouse workers. A simple Intertubes search reveals this reality.

Amazon still has workers in its warehouses? I thought they'd all be robots by now.

Re:Department fail

[youn]

From what I hear, only a few corporate drones :p

Re:Department fail

[Bing Tsher E]

It seems like Amazon is a cultish organization. Bezos seems more like a creep all the time to me. For what it's worth, the 'defenders' of the Amazon Culture seem similar in some ways to Scientologists. I've suspected Bezos has a background with the occult, from my earliest observations of him.

I hope flying monkeys won't be set loose on me for making this post.

Re:Department fail

[Sardaukar86]

I've suspected Bezos has a background with the occult, from my earliest observations of him.

LOLwut? Couldn't he just be a creep as you initially suggest? What outward signs do occultists typically display?
Hmm, perhaps I just need to get out more and meet some occultists.

Re:Department fail

[Maxo-Texas]

Robots pick the pieces and then humans have to work like robots to verify and box them. pretty ugly.

Re:Department fail

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about Amazon (never having worked for them), but I have seen the same thing at pretty much any place that I have worked to greater or lesser degrees. Far too many employers today and over the last 20-35 years seem to expect that the employee will have no life outside of their job, or that their job will be their entire life. The employers treat the employees like an easily replaceable commodity who is owed no loyalty or even fair treatment, while expecting employees to be available to work overtime and what should be days off with no prior notice. Even fast food places are paying salaries to avoid paying overtime. For IT workers. employers expecting 80-100 hours of work per employee per week is not unusual.

I learned many years ago that having a life outside of work (and unrelated to work) is important to a person's physical and mental health. I have quit good paying jobs because the amount of work expected exceeded what I felt was healthy. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind doing my job to the best of my abilities, and working hard when necessary. But there are limits to how much work one person can do. Far too many employers have been expecting more work out of fewer employees for less pay and benefits for far too many years! Its time for this to stop!

Re:Department fail

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect he's just your garden variety sociopath. Very good a manipulating people to do what he wants without much regard to the effect it might have on them.

Re: Department fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Nailed it. A sociopath and a narcissist just like Jobs. I pity the fools who destroy their families and work for these assholes

Re:Department fail

[Anonymous Coward]

> They always win "best place to work"

FYI, those "awards" are usually bought and paid for and have nothing to do with actual working conditions or voting. Just buy enough advertising from the publication and you are guaranteed to "win" the award.

Re: Department fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty much this.

He didn't have to work a single weekend if he didn't want to, but it's usually his subordinates who have to... or else.

Defending yourself on pages of NYT ?

[Anonymous Coward]

If anyone buys page to defend himself or his company on pages of NYT, in my mind he is guilty.

Logical

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

So...they should increase the H1b's?

[INSERT Sarcastic Dodge Tomato GIF Here]

Re:Logical

[Anonymous Coward]

Having more employees would certainly help. We only have twenty developers on staff, but have had over forty open positions for the entire three years I've worked here. We spent well into six figures last year, and only got a couple of experienced developers to submit resumes. The rest of us have had to work "hundreds" as my boss calls them, which are 16 hours a day on weekdays and 10 hours a day on weekends, for over two years. Also, we haven't allowed any vacation time other than around Christmas in nearly three years. I would love it if we could find more developers. We have plenty of money to pay them, but there aren't any out there without a job. The vast majority of my friends are developers since I'm single and have been a programmer for 44 years, but even I don't know of a single developer without a job that wants one. We need H1Bs to keep from working our domestic developers to death.

Re:Logical

[Anonymous Coward]

Your company regularly makes everyone work 100 hours a week, and you wonder why they're having problems hiring developers?? It's a fucking miracle the rest of your team hasn't left yet to go work for a less shitty company!

Re:Logical

[Anonymous Coward]

> twenty developers on staff, but have had over forty open positions

Having twice as many open dev positions as you have devs isn't uncommon. Although, it is a bit unusual to have so many open for so long.

My wife is the recruiter for the company I work for, and despite working very hard and us attending every tech social event we can from MongoDB conferences to trivia nights, we've only found a single developer that didn't have a job and wanted one. My company even offers a $10k referral bonus if you recommend someone that we hire. Internally, we offer $25k to employees that recommend someone we hire. Even with that bonus, no one has ever been recommended to us. Those bonuses might sound like a lot, but considering my wife makes six figures and has only been able to find a single qualified candidate in the past year, that's not much money. You just can't find developers at any price. And, because we make so much, we can afford to take time off which reduces the number available thus increasing the price which then decreases the pool since we don't have to work and so on. The feedback loop means you can't find developers.

Re:Logical

[FlyHelicopters]

You just can't find developers at any price./quote

Don't be silly, of course you can... you're just not offering enough.

Six figures sounds like a lot, but it isn't anymore. I make about $300k these days and I work 40 hours a week (I work more some weeks during crunch, but I also get 8 weeks of vacation to compensate, and I take it). It would cost $500k a year to get me to move (more if you're in CA), but if you needed my skills, I think I'd be worth it.

Are you offering $500K? What do you need?

Re:Logical

[YrWrstNtmr]

The rest of us have had to work "hundreds" as my boss calls them, which are 16 hours a day on weekdays and 10 hours a day on weekends, for over two years. Also, we haven't allowed any vacation time other than around Christmas in nearly three years.

Change this first. Then you might get some actual employees.

Re:Logical

[Anonymous Coward]

100 hours...wonder why they're having problems hiring developers

That isn't why we're having trouble. We, of course, don't mention that. We also hide all of the air mattresses and sleeping bags before any candidates come to the office. That problem is completely orthogonal to the problem of finding developers.

Re:Logical

[ztexas]

That's cool that you are attending tech social events and such. But ultimately "you're doing it wrong" (or they are). OMG we can't get someone with 5 years mongodb experience at $140K. Rather than attending more events, the effective approach is likely to try advertising the position at 1.25X the compensation level every few months. It works. Someone *will* leave their current position for something better. But not at like 5 or 10 % more because they like you. That being said, perhaps just wait a few months. The pendulum will swing the other way, and desperation will happen eventually. It's been a long, happy run, and I fear that the economy may cycle down prior to our reaching astronomical IT consulting fees seen circa 2000. Adjusted for inflation we're not even close.

Re:Logical

[Anonymous Coward]

you are having trouble because word on the street is that you work 100 hours. Everyone knows, no one applies.

Re:Logical

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, but that is why you are having problems. You think it is easy to hide the fact that you are all overworked and you can tidy up the place to hide evidence that you live at your work, but people aren't stupid. They know the culture. Just like employers can look up information about candidates on the Internet, the same way candidates can look up working conditions. And Amazon isn't a place many people would like to work.

In my province there is also an IT company that makes custom made software. They also have a 'flexible' team of programmers, which just means that the programmers have to be flexible in their working hours. They still have to do the usual 8 till 5, even when there is no work. But when there is work, the flexibility kicks in. They have to work lots of hours, they have to work in the weekend. Having a child that needs attention isn't showing flexibility and loyalty to the company. You can still phone someone like your neighbor to pick up your child from the child care center. That's their culture.

But lately they have been complaining that they can't find new programmers and this with so many unemployed people. And they offer so many benefits like a laptop, a smart phone and a company car and the chance to work in a wonderful team.
 
Well of course you can't find people willing to work under these conditions. Only very few people are willing to have a life like this. If you love your family, you can not have a live like this. It is even better to just remain unemployed for some time until you find the right job, than having to endure this flexible team spirit that is fueled by many team building events. It almost sounds like religious indoctrination and I'm well aware that some people are vulnerable to this kind of indoctrination. But many people are not and do not even want to try to work at that company because they know about the working conditions.

Yet that doesn't stop the local news paper to have a monthly full page infomercial about that company where they can still try to attract new candidates. It probably costs them quite some money to have this full page advert that looks like a news article. But why not just change the working conditions. The company grew too fast in its history but they handled it wrong. Instead of hiring enough people, and slowing down growth when you can't find them, they just demand unhealthy working ethics from their programmers.

Re:Logical

[NormalVisual]

That isn't why we're having trouble. We, of course, don't mention that.

You don't have to - word gets around. If your coders are being expected to regularly put in 2.5 times the "normal" hours per week, the company should be expected to be paying them at least 2.5 times what the going rate is. Offer that deal, and you might see more interest from competent people.

Re:Logical

[Anonymous Coward]

You are part of the problem. You sound like you genuinely have no fucking clue as to what the problem is.

Re:Logical

[Anonymous Coward]

Having more employees would certainly help. We only have twenty developers on staff, but have had over forty open positions for the entire three years I've worked here. We spent well into six figures last year, and only got a couple of experienced developers to submit resumes. The rest of us have had to work "hundreds" as my boss calls them, which are 16 hours a day on weekdays and 10 hours a day on weekends, for over two years. Also, we haven't allowed any vacation time other than around Christmas in nearly three years. I would love it if we could find more developers. We have plenty of money to pay them, but there aren't any out there without a job. The vast majority of my friends are developers since I'm single and have been a programmer for 44 years, but even I don't know of a single developer without a job that wants one. We need H1Bs to keep from working our domestic developers to death.

You are either a corporate shill or a lying asshole. Maybe both.

If you can't fill 40 positions it's because your expectations are unrealistic and/or the salary/working conditions suck.

Spit out your manager's dick and get to fixing things.

Interestingly... The captcha was stones...

Re:Logical

[Anonymous Coward]

8 weeks of vacation to compensate, and I take it

Sounds like a great way to get fired. If your company needs you so little that you can be that lazy and refuse to come to work so often, then they'll eventually realize the truth that they don't need you. The only full week I've taken off since I got my first programming job out of college was in 1993. That screwed me for years. I learned my lesson, and I have not done that since.

Re:Logical

[Anonymous Coward]

You just can't find developers at any price.

Well this developer will work just about any job for the right price. I'd personally take $300k to work just about any development job regardless of shittiness. I was in the navy at one point. Can't be worse than being stuck on a ship with 500 guys without internet working 16 - 18 hours a day 7 days a week. Feel free to email me at: Iwantajob@hmamail.com

Re:Logical

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, if I can get $500k a year not being very important to my company's success, sign me up. Why do I give a crap about their success? If they're willing to pay it, I'll take it.

Re:Logical

[Anonymous Coward]

You apparently work in a hell-hole. I take off around a month a year, and have been doing so for almost a decade with no ill effect. You need to find a job that treats you (explicitly and implicitly) as a human being.

Re: Logical

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone reading your post is most certainly not going to submit a resume.

Sixteen hour days, ten hour weekends ? Hahahaha NO.

I don't care if the company is paying $200k / year. Your hours border on insanity and I would be damned if I'm going to give the company that much of my time.

Re: Logical

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. This is what's wrong with the American work ethic.

Everyone is afraid to take their vacation time out of fear of being let go because they're not seen as " important " or " critical ".

Tip: You work for a very shitty company if you're so damned critical you can't even take your own vacation time off. Tell them to hire more employees and quit relying on one person. You can bet your ass the CEO and the rest of the executive branch takes their time off. . . .

Trust me when I say you're not the super-hero you think you are. You'll burn out or die from a heart attack or stroke and they'll replace you within two weeks. From overseas if necessary. Then they'll work that one into the ground. Wash, rinse and repeat as necessary.

Remember, the brightest star burns out the fastest. . . .

Re:Logical

[Motherfucking Shit]

This sounds like a troll, or maybe Zuckerberg posting as AC. But I'll bite just in case some congressional staffer who might believe this nonsense is reading.

If your company wasn't run by fucking slave drivers, they wouldn't have such a tough time filling open positions. 16x5 +10 (+10?) is worse than what EA used to expect out of their employees, and they had the worst reputation in the business. They also wound up having to pay out millions in a labor dispute surrounding those practices, something your bosses might be wise to research.

Where are you located? Consider recruiting remotely. If the company is scared of using telecommuters, open a satellite office somewhere. Not everyone involved in software development needs to be in the bay area, or in Austin or other expensive "tech cities." Smaller southern metros like Little Rock and Memphis have rich talent pools with lower costs of living (read: you can pay people less and they'll still feel well-compensated) and lower cost per square foot to lease commercial space. We even have the internet down here!

Not that anyone in these cities will put up with 100+ hour weeks for very long, either, but there are lots of unemployed American developers looking for a job. You just can't expect to find many unemployed people in cities where a studio apartment is $4,000 a month; they can't afford to be there in the first place.

Re:Logical

[Applehu Akbar]

Referral bonuses still exist? I thought those had gone the way of the 40-hour week with paid overtime and the Aeron chairs for all.

Re:Logical

[Anonymous Coward]

Similar situation here - take 10 days off in a row for vacations, taking unpaid leave if the PTO balance isn't quite high enough.

Re:Logical

[Anonymous Coward]

The rest of us have had to work "hundreds" as my boss calls them, which are 16 hours a day on weekdays and 10 hours a day on weekends, for over two years. Also, we haven't allowed any vacation time other than around Christmas in nearly three years.

Change this first. Then you might get some actual employees.

I work somewhere with the same problem. How do you work less when the problem is that you can't find enough developers in the first place?

Depending on the platform you develop for, just treading water to keep your existing code running can take a tremendous amount of time. Most of our team's time so far this year was spent porting our app to Microsoft SQL Server 2014. Last year, our big effort was in porting to Server 2012 R2. We skipped 2012 and previously only supported Server 2008 R2, so that was a huge effort that took about ten man-years to do. We also have an iOS app, so we have to update it every year. Customers demand it, so we have to do it. The newer Microsoft and Apple products are nice improvements to previous versions, but when you have a C++ codebase for Windows that dates back to 1994 and for iOS to 2.0, it isn't easy. We also work in a regulated environment so there's about two man-years of QA effort, and thus a lot of dev work that comes back to us, for every single release, so I don't see how things are ever going to get better until we can hire more people.

Re:Logical

[JoeMerchant]

I don't think the relationship should be linear - 2.5x the work for 2.5x the hours...

If you count waking hours, a typical (3 weeks vacation M-F 9-5) job expects 49 *40 / (52 * 7 * 16 ) = 1960 / 5824 = right at 33% of your life. As they take away my free time, I have to hire (and manage) people to do things for me that I would normally do for myself - this drives up costs by as much as 3-4x in many instances, and can become incalculable when it means hiring people to watch my children grow up for me.

I think a fair overtime formula would be paying you 4x your standard hourly rate by the time you reach 80 hours a week, something like P = P * (H / 40)^2 when H > 40 - by the time they've taken all your waking hours, pay would be at 9x standard. Is getting the project out on-time critically important to the financial future of the company? If it really is, the team that "gives their all" should be getting more than "attaboys" in return.

If it's a short-term crisis where 4 or 40 extra hours worked at a critical juncture can be "paid back" in comp-time within a week or two, that makes total sense in an "overtime exempt" relationship. If the crisis is dragging for months and all you're getting is a gold star on your annual review, put in a few extra hours a week to shop for a better working relationship.

Re:Logical

[Tawnos]

Honestly, working less can mean you're producing more. Those long hours are sustainable for a week, tops, before the negative side effects far outweigh any actual benefit.

Re:Logical

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure? Word gets around. You've been blind to it. I work in a law firm and we have trouble finding good talent in most areas of IT. Most people that eventually DO apply specifically mention they have second thoughts about working in a law firm because of what they "heard" from someone else about the politics and the environment. We are peoples third or forth choice at best. If they had to go to down to that level of options to get a job, they are not superstars.

Re:Logical

[Anonymous Coward]

there are lots of unemployed American developers looking for a job.

Really? Where are they? We spend about $10k per month on glassdoor, monster, dice, etc. advertising for our five locations, and most months we don't get a single qualified applicant. Even statements like "we pay 25% more than market" don't seem to shake-out any developers. We have three recruiters going through github and a bunch of mailing lists contacting people, and none of the people we contacted were interested in a job. The only thing the past ten years that we've tried that has worked at all was opening an office in Donetsk, Ukraine. With the Russians getting closer to that city, we've lost over half of a developers that moved out of the city. We've tried to move any to the US that were willing, but we've failed at that. Our main product is interesting since it uses MongoDB, Redis, Elasticsearch, Angular, Linux, and Git, but even that doesn't seem to attract any developers at all. There's a huge demand, but no available developers at any price. I make about 60% more than I did at Microsoft, but none of my former coworkers are willing to leave Microsoft.

Re:Logical

[Anonymous Coward]

If your company can't run for more than 2 days without a given person present, what on earth are you going to do when that person quits for a job that gives him more time off? Having people you can't do without for more than 2 days is bad both for the employee and for the company. It's great for the employee's pocket book, though.

Re:Logical

[major_handicap]

If your company can't run for more than 2 days without a given person present, what on earth are you going to do when that person quits for a job that gives him more time off? Having people you can't do without for more than 2 days is bad both for the employee and for the company. It's great for the employee's pocket book, though.

^^^^^^^ This

Re: Logical

[Anonymous Coward]

Man times like these I'm glad to be in a country that makes it illegal to not give at least 4 weeks paid vacation a year

Re:Logical

[Anonymous Coward]

> also get 8 weeks of vacation to compensate, and I take it

If you can miss two months a year, plus I assume the normal nearly two weeks of standard holidays, it doesn't sound like you're very critical to your company's success.

I have six weeks of vacation a year, like most of our developers, but as far as I can remember, not a one of our developers has been able to be out for more than a week a year in the past decade. Maybe you work in an industry with no competition and no legally required changes. I work on payroll, and keeping up with the yearly federal, state, and local tax changes is a full time job for half a dozen program managers and about two dozen developers. Also, this year's ObamaCare reporting requirements have taken nearly fifty man-years to implement. You must work on a very static product with very simple requirements. For the rest of us, that isn't reality.

I'd love to hire more developers. I have the budget to increase my team size by more than 50%, but it has been years since I've interviewed a single Java developer with experience with Spring. We're in Redmond, WA and pay about 50% more than Microsoft, but everyone here seems to want a big name on their resume. All of the developers I've lost the past five years have moved to Microsoft or Google in Kirkland, WA.

Re:Logical

[Anonymous Coward]

I've worked 90+ hours a week for two months straight back when I was young and dumb--never again. There is no reason to work this hard for more than a short and massively additionally compensated E-fucking-MERGENCY period unless you own the company. No wonder there's been 40 open positions for three years: any marginally competent prospective employee will smell the toxic stench of gross overwork, corporate incompetence, and imminent bankruptcy and run away screaming. No matter how well the company hides the air mattresses and sleeping bags no number of cans of air freshener can cover up the no-showering-for-weeks-BO. That shit's in the carpet and furniture and nothing short of fire will cleanse it.

You're in a field where if you're half way decent you get to write your own ticket. Take the weekend "off." Turn the phone off. Don't check email. Walk into your bosses office on Monday at 8AM sharp and demand that your pay is converted from salary to hourly, paid in cash at the end of each day for that day's work, and they don't get shit from you until your lawyer has approved the new contract. When they refuse, quit on the spot. You'll likely lose your paid in arrears compensation period, but bankruptcy is unavoidable for anyplace run as you've described so you might not actually be losing a cent.

Re:Logical

[Anonymous Coward]

If the company can't handle some time without you then your company doesn't know how to manage people or projects. There is always a risk of someone not being available even if they live at their desk. If someone's job is so critical there should be redundancy built in. You've had or are a very bad manager and/or a spineless developer.

Re:Logical

[Anonymous Coward]

Management approves this message.

Re: Logical

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever heard of training?
Hire people an train them.
When did this culture of I can only hire people already trained with my exact needs.

Re: Logical

[Anonymous Coward]

BTW your pay and benefits package sucks. Even with a bad reputation you could get people to interview if you have high enough salaries. Most likely your company has a bad reputation and pays mediocre salaries. You should find a new job.

Re:Logical

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep telling yourself that to get through.

Some employers like to keep their high-value employees happy and working efficiently.

Re:Logical

[YrWrstNtmr]

I work somewhere with the same problem. How do you work less when the problem is that you can't find enough developers in the first place?

You've overworked yourselves into a corner.
If I come in for an interview, and you guys tell me "We routinely work 70 hour weeks"...that's it, interview over, see ya, bye bye.

You have to change your corporate culture first. NOTE: This may involve firing your boss. And his boss.

Re:Logical

[Anonymous Coward]

One week vacation screwed you over for years? Apparantly your are a workaholic. If it's what you thrive in, fine.
But if it's because you are so afraid of being let go at the earliest opportunity, you really need to review what you're actually doing to yourself.

Being employed is a business proposition, just like any business deal. You get paid X for doing Y.
Now, if you do 2Y for X, you're actually selling yourself short and in effect devaluing your own time and work-efforts (X/2)!

Let people trample over you, this may happen. Make friends / be friendly instead and make sure of getting enough rest. Business and life can't sustain without trust.

There's also the undeniable fact that after working more than a few hours most people become more and more inefficient, uncreative and prone to errors.
If I were manager, I would make sure that wouldn't be allowed!

Y may be time, it may be deliverables, whatever. X would normally be currency.

Re:Logical

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like you're an operations guy who doesn't get the bigger picture.

I could be out of the office for a week. I'm there because I can generate new ideas and new products front to back. The managers who have no organisational skills and don't know how to run their departments properly tend to be the ones running weekends.

Re:Logical

[NormalVisual]

I don't think the relationship should be linear - 2.5x the work for 2.5x the hours..

I think it should be more myself, which is why I said "at least 2.5x". That's a starting point - under that, no one's going to be interested in even talking to you about that kind of gig.

If it really is, the team that "gives their all" should be getting more than "attaboys" in return.

This is the real problem. Employment is supposed to be a business transaction involving an exchange of value between equal partners. If you're taking all my time, you're either going to compensate me fairly for what I've given, or you're going to have to find some other sucker to fleece. I had this conversation with my boss a few months back - she was chastising me for not putting in 60-hour weeks like some of the other folks, and I explained that when we agreed on a compensation package, it was with the understanding that it was based on a 40-hour week:

Mgr: "Well, you're on salary, so that means you put in whatever hours it takes to get it done."
Me: "Okay, so that also means that if I get all of my work done in 20 hours in a given week, I can go home for the week, right?"
Mgr: "Um, no, that's not how it works."
Me: "Uh, yeah, that's exactly how 'salary' is supposed to work."
Mgr: [crickets]

I'm often labeled as having a "bad attitude" because I refuse to let management disrespect my time like that, but I'm still working after 25 years in the game, so I don't really care.

Re:Logical

[war4peace]

They do. They have them at my workplace. But I just can't do this to my friends (get them hired where I work).

Re:Logical

[Anonymous Coward]

It would cost $500k a year to get me to move (more if you're in CA), but if you needed my skills, I think I'd be worth it.

Hopefully grammar isn't one of those skills.

Re:Logical

[amber_of_luxor]

> I would love it if we could find more developers. We have plenty of money to pay them, but there aren't any out there without a job.

So what you do is go to the local college, and hire the next 250 people that passed a programming course. Then train them in-house.

If you aren't willing to do that, then your problem is that you point blank refuse to train people to do the job you need. And all your complaints are about your organizations stupidity, and unwillingness to do what it needs to do, in order to have a full core of developers.

Re:Logical

[amber_of_luxor]

> Those bonuses might sound like a lot,

The only people for whom a US$25K is a lot, are people whose annual salary is US$25K.

>and has only been able to find a single qualified candidate in the past year,

That sounds like the company is refusing to train people for the job. As such, there is no sympathy for your inability to hire people.

Re:Logical

[Gr8Apes]

Seems like you have a bigger problem - SQL Server. I understand why you have to update iOS each release, but why would you need to update the back end with every release of SQL Server? I know systems that are still running on 2005, and they run fine. Your boss/PM/stakeholder needs a stake put through their heads. Skipping the next DB release might buy you enough time to put your house in order. Skipping the following release might buy you enough time to review your architecture and implement something to get off the upgrade cycle mill you're being deathmarched to currently. Your DB should not need to be upgraded often, if at all, once you're in production.

Re:Logical

[Anonymous Coward]

The typical limit I've dealt with the past twenty years has been around a two day limit every quarter. When I was at Microsoft, it was even less than that since we had so many key people we couldn't do without.

You're doing programming wrong, very wrong.

There should be no software, codebase or system in your organisation that *at least* an entire team doesn't know how to operate, debug or extend.

At any time there should never be outstanding work that can't be completed by another employee if one employee is away for the day/week/or year.

Re: Logical

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like you are pissing your life away. After 44 years you shouldn't have to work in a sweat shop! Live a little man...

Re: Logical

[Anonymous Coward]

Totally agree

Re:Logical

[Anonymous Coward]

That isn't why we're having trouble. We, of course, don't mention that. We also hide all of the air mattresses and sleeping bags before any candidates come to the office. That problem is completely orthogonal to the problem of finding developers.

Either you are suffering from Stockholm Syndrome or you are doing an amazing parody. If you aren't doing a parody you need to re-evaluate your situation. You are being abused.

Find a new job. If what you just wrote ('I don't know of a single developer without a job that wants one') then you shouldn't have a problem finding one where you aren't forced to work 16 hour days.

Re: Logical

[Anonymous Coward]

We all know how great it is to work at microshaft. Get a life...

Re:Logical

[Anonymous Coward]

Er, maybe corporate america needs to flush its head gear. The UK had very strict laws on the subject of 100hour work weeks. Call them socialist, I don't care, but the culture here is one of slavery "Oh, but we pay you/" certainly not enough if I sacrifice that much of my time to make sure the upper echelon's bonuses are paid.
If you push people that hard then you can forget quality, but that's not what we're pushing for. Instead we're pushing for that damn check box to be filled in. This country is in a fundamental ethical and moral dilemma of epic proportion.

Re:Logical

[Anonymous Coward]

I see a bigger problem than SQL Server. I don't personally like SQL Server but unless their app is for managing SQL Server stuff, there shouldn't be much porting required even if SQL Server is upgraded. Microsoft and SQL Server may be crap but they tend to maintain backward compatibility reasonably well.

One big change that might affect old stuff is newer versions of SQL Server no longer default to giving LOCAL SYSTEM db owner privileges to all DBs.

I wouldn't want to work for a company that has teams porting their app with every version of SQL server. I can understand teams testing to see if the app still works. But that's like running the regression tests under various conditions and seeing if anything breaks.

Re:Logical

[jkflying]

Maybe it is your terrible working conditions that makes people uninterested in working with you? And anyway, after 40h/w on a regular basis you aren't actually getting any extra productivity out of people, only more hours and resentment.

Re: Logical

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because those places you mention, by and large, manage projects properly and actually let their devs take their vacation. Turns out having a life outside of work is pretty highly valued.

Re:Logical

[Anonymous Coward]

You are either a troll or someone who is so dense that I'd be scared to think there is software you've written out there in the real world.

Re:Logical

[Anonymous Coward]

Hiding air mattresses? Oh come on, at least try. This place really is dead on its feet.

Re:Logical

[ArsenneLupin]

Makes $300k and can't quote... Who is this company who's throwing out that much money after dimwits? :-)

Re:Logical

[ArsenneLupin]

Most of our team's time so far this year was spent porting our app to Microsoft SQL Server 2014.

And you wonder why no developer worth his salt wants to work for you? D'oh...

Customers demand it, so we have to do it.

Really? So charge them extra for it...

so I don't see how things are ever going to get better until we can hire more people.

... or switch over to a saner platform? And for those few customers who demand Microsoft quality, just skip testing, and they'll never notice it's no longer Microsoft... :-)

Re:Logical

[FlyHelicopters]

Makes $300k and can't quote... Who is this company who's throwing out that much money after dimwits? :-)

Accurate quotes on Slashdot isn't part of my job. :)

Of course that misses the point, the poster I was replying to said there aren't developers at any price, and that simply isn't true. He/she simply isn't offering enough money.

Re:Logical

[Bengie]

If I'm doing hard mental work, I may go home after 7 hours at work, which may have included 3 hours of breaks. Once you're reached your limit, you have negative value. If you're working 100 hours as a "developer", you doing your position a disservice and creating sub-par code. Some people may be able to do those hours, but 99.99% can't, the rest may think they can, the same way people think multi-tasking makes them "faster".

Re:Logical

[Anonymous Coward]

Must suck to be someone who can easily be replaced.

Re:Logical

[Anonymous Coward]

how would you know? you don't sound like someone with much actual experience

Re:Logical

[tehcyder]

The rest of us have had to work "hundreds" as my boss calls them, which are 16 hours a day on weekdays and 10 hours a day on weekends, for over two years. Also, we haven't allowed any vacation time other than around Christmas in nearly three years. Change this first. Then you might get some actual employees.

He lets them have Christmas off?! Fucking communist.

Re:Logical

[Rakarra]

You have to change your corporate culture first. NOTE: This may involve firing your boss. And his boss

This is important, because the more people you have, the easier it will be to find work for them to maintain the same hours, all of it "critical" and "demanded by customers."

Re:Logical

[Wolfrider]

--I wish I had mod points for this. +5 Insightful. Companies NEED to be willing to train people.

Only 100 hours a week?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like socialism to me!

I expect my team to work at least 200 hours a week, sometimes more

Re: Only 100 hours a week?

[TheMeuge]

Exactly. Took him a year to heal from working 100 hours a week? Talk to the tens of thousands who do that for much of a decade. They're called residents.

Re: Only 100 hours a week?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll work 100 hours a week*, for $50,000.

(*) for 1 week per year

More reviews about working at amazon

[Drew M.]

From glassdoor, it does seem like there's a troubling amount of people complaining about work-life balance, although not totally out of line with other tech companies:
http://www.glassdoor.com/Revie...

Douchebag alert

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck this guy. He makes a name for himself on the backs of others and then cry's crocodile tears exploiting the tragedy of his own creation to imagine himself the mascot of "compassionate" mangers by growing a conscience suddenly advocating on behalf of their teams?

Too late asshole. You've already reaped the rewards of your heartless slave drive. You don't get to backpedal, keep the accolades, and then pretend like it never happened.

This quote says it all:
"I don't think I ever felt worse in my entire career. If I could give it all back, I would, in an instant, no questions asked. Physically and mentally, I took about a year to heal.""

"I took about a year to heal" aka even now the only consequence he regrets are the personal costs to himself and nobody else.

What a selfish POS!

Re:Douchebag alert

[rudy_wayne]

The so called rebuttal by Nick Ciubotariu from a few days ago, reeks of disingenuousness and playing games with semantics.

I’ve never worked a single weekend when I didn’t want to. No one tells me to work nights.:
This may very well be true. BUT, what DOES happen, in almost every company, is that managers create enormous workloads with ridiculously short deadlines, and it is physically impossible to get the work done, on time, unless you work 100 hours a week. So, fearing a bad performance review for not getting their work done and for not being a "team player" who is willing to "do whatever ti takes", people take it upon themselves to "voluntarily" work long hours.

There is no “culling of the staff” annually. That’s just not true. No one would be here if that actually took place and it was a thing"
Even with Amazon's terrible reputation, how many tens of thousands of resumes do they get every year?

I’ve never seen anyone cry. And if that was truly the environment, that’s just wrong, and certainly not something we encourage. In today’s Amazon, management and HR would take care of that in an instant.
Major lulz for this one. How many tens of thousands of people, working at thousands of different companies, have filed lawsuits over things like sexual harassment, gender discrimination and racial discrimination? And in 99% of those cases, the lasuit only came about because the person went to HR and was either ignored or HR took their managers side. In any company, HR is the most completely useless department.

I won’t discuss Organizational Level Ranking. I will dispute – vehemently so – the assertion that “You learn how to diplomatically throw people under the bus”. We don’t have time to do that here, or to teach people that:
More word play. Technically, you don't actually instruct people to do that. But your policies encourage people to do exactly that. It doesn't take long for people to figure out how to sabotage their co-workers for their own benefit. And since it's impossible for you to know everything that goes on with every employee in the entire company, or even a tiny percentage of them, claiming that this behavior doesn't exist is just plain stupid and dishonest.

Re:Douchebag alert

[Anonymous Coward]

Does the guy work for Amazon, or the NSA? Because he's got the master spin skills of an NSA PR flack.

For me personally, having never been near Seattle (or silicon valley) I had been hearing stories of how shitty it was to work white-collar jobs at amazon (nevermind the crap the warehouses dump on their people) years before the NYT story was published. The NYT story didn't reveal anything new, it was just confirmation of everything I'd already heard.

Re:Douchebag alert

[Applehu Akbar]

Basic question: Does Amazon have stack ranking as official policy, or does it not? Or is it just in certain departments?

Re:Douchebag alert

[Tough Love]

Total stack rank shop. Google does it too, not so widely known. Slightly watered down calibration system compared to Mordorsoft, but just as destructive.

Re:Douchebag alert

[Tough Love]

In any company, HR is the most completely useless department.

Anybody who has worked in tech for more than a month knows that HR is just the mindless, obedient enforcement arm of management, and not even top management at that. Never, ever share your issues with HR.

Re:Douchebag alert

[war4peace]

The guy is "Head of Infrastructure Development, Amazon.com Search Experience (SX)". Would you expect a guy in that position to mingle with the plebe?
Everything he says is correct - from the little he knows about the plebe who work for him. And trust me on that: he knows VERY little.

Starting Director-level, people live in the clouds (no pun intended) and to them, it's like watching the ground from an airplane: you see dots instead of people and no details about them.

And of course he's defending the hand that feeds them, and it's likely that hand feeds him a LOT.

Re:Douchebag alert

[Anonymous Coward]

In any company, HR is the most completely useless department.

I disagree. If the people in HR are doing their job right then it's great. (i.e. looking out for the employees instead of the company)
The problem is that it takes balls to do that, and in many companies HR is set up as some sort of lawsuite avoidance scheme.

Re:Douchebag alert

[Anonymous Coward]

From my experience with them twice, they're there to protect the company from a lawsuit, not protect the employees from any particular bad practice or person.

Re:Douchebag alert

[Anonymous Coward]

> There is no “culling of the staff” annually. That’s just not true

Actually it is true, and as a manager he knows it. The piece is ridiculously emotionally defensive to the point where he's just denying stuff that is in plain sight.

> management and HR would take care of that in an instant.

At Amazon, HR is not on your side. Again, this is a no-brainer.

Also, it's not clear how HR is going to "take care of" what led to an employee crying at their desk. Especially since it's the precious, immutable culture that is to blame.

Nick, here's some Anytime Feedback: While you Biased for Action and Delivered Results with a Wrong A Lot rant, you scored a big zero on Insist on the Highest Standards, Earning Trust of Others, and Diving Deep (a journalist's skill that the NYT exercised). Nice job of Inventing facts and Simplifying the arguments though! Think Big - Bezos linked to you so this is probably going to help your career long term... Fine company animal. Best of luck to your reports tho...

Re:Douchebag alert

[cthulhu11]

I’ve never worked a single weekend when I didn’t want to. No one tells me to work nights
He's an executive, right? Of course he does as he damned well pleases. What about the people who do the actual work?
I’ve never seen anyone cry.
Either they're too afraid of him to let him see them do it, or you never see him at all.
A former boss of mine is now an exec at Amazon. Treated people like machines back then, so I can see why she succeeded so well there.
My current boss is an interesting contrast, he has explicitly told people to not work nights and weekends unless on-call or there's a truly exceptional situation.

Re:Douchebag alert

[tehcyder]

In any company, HR is the most completely useless department.

Anybody who has worked in tech for more than a month knows that HR is just the mindless, obedient enforcement arm of management, and not even top management at that. Never, ever share your issues with HR.

In decent societies, HR is actually there to enforce employee protection and heaalth and safety laws and to protect the staff from the worst abuses of upper management. Since this is akin to socialism, it's no wonder all the Americans on slashdot hate them so much.

Re:Douchebag alert

[Rakarra]

There is no “culling of the staff” annually. That’s just not true. No one would be here if that actually took place and it was a thing"
Even with Amazon's terrible reputation, how many tens of thousands of resumes do they get every year?

When people get sick of the horrible working conditions and leave to find a better job on their own, you don't need to 'cull the staff.' Or, put better, you're constantly culling but calling it by another name.

Re:Douchebag alert

[Tough Love]

In decent societies, HR is actually there to enforce employee protection and heaalth and safety laws and to protect the staff from the worst abuses of upper management. Since this is akin to socialism, it's no wonder all the Americans on slashdot hate them so much.

Americans hate HR because of what HR does, not because of what HR is supposed to do.

"I wanted to work this weekend"

[SlithyMagister]

I really did

FTFS:
"I've never worked a single weekend when I didn't want to"

Employee: "I wanted to work this weekend. I really did"
Interviewer: "Oh, that's good. Why did you want to work this weekend?"
Employee: "Cuz they'd fire my ass otherwise, doofus!"

'nuff said. Sure, some management type work weekends to "set an example" but otherwise I don't buy it.

I was a mid-level IT dept manager for a major newspaper. I was never specifically asked to work overtime, but I often did so because it was my responsibility to ensure production readiness. So yeah, I chose to work, but to say I "wanted to" would be stretching it.
Peace,...

Re:"I wanted to work this weekend"

[brunes69]

"I was a mid-level IT dept manager for a major newspaper..." ... and there is the difference. You are not a software developer, so you have no idea what it's like. When you have a problem to solve, and you know in your gut you are on the VERGE of solving it, very often you will work late or sometimes work into the weekend to get it done just to see it to completion.

I can not even count the number of times this has happened to me during my career, that I was sitting there coding coding coding, working on the problem, and looked up and it was 7:00PM or 8:00 PM and I totally missed supper.

  It happens in creative fields all the time. Have you ever heard the expression "in the groove"? When you are in it, you don't want to get out.

Re:"I wanted to work this weekend"

[Anonymous Coward]

mid-level IT dept manager

Why would you chose such an awful life.

Re:"I wanted to work this weekend"

[erapert]

I know what you're talking about, and I've worked very late on interesting problems/projects myself.

But employees should not be required to do so; certainly not for extended periods of time.

Re:"I wanted to work this weekend"

[Beeftopia]

Times I've wanted to work on the weekend:

1) When I'm doing work on the side and want to get it done. I'll work on the weekend.

2) When I'm being paid well and able to telecommute, and there's a task that needs to be done - I'll work on the weekend. Heck, in that situation, I've worked late nights too. The working environment couldn't get more comfortable, with my own kitchen and bathroom and climate control. And when my brain shuts down late at night, I'm a few feet from the bed.

When I'm on-site... and I'm eating from the vending machine, trying to avoid using the low-privacy, cesspool toilets, and it's too cold or too hot, and I can't take a few minutes off and relax on the couch or outside in peace - yeah, I have no interest in staying there longer than my 8 hours. I don't care how interesting the work is. I've done it of course, both late night and weekends, but under duress like the parent poster noted.

Re:"I wanted to work this weekend"

[spire3661]

I.T. solves problems too, you aren't special. What the hell do you think IT does? Sit around all day playing Quake? We write scripts, analyze data, deal with impossible demands. We are not so different as you like to think.

Re:"I wanted to work this weekend"

[Zero__Kelvin]

"'nuff said. Sure, some management type work weekends to "set an example" but otherwise I don't buy it."

Everybody is different, and the same person is different at different times. I used to work at a company that had a week long Christmas shutdown, but I used to go in every one of those days. I wanted to do so. At that time of my life it was preferable. You wouldn't catch me doing that today. My point is that it is not implausible that someone would want to work on a weekend. If the project is fun / cool, or if you are just on a roll solving a problem, or for myriad other reasons, one very well might want to come in on a Saturday and continue along a productive path.

Re:"I wanted to work this weekend"

[Anonymous Coward]

I can not even count the number of times this has happened to me during my career, that I was sitting there coding coding coding, working on the problem, and looked up and it was 7:00PM or 8:00 PM and I totally missed supper.

Your example is unintentionally revealing and not in a good way. A well managed company discourages that sort of "missing supper" behaviour because it is like a drug, if feels good for you while you are doing it, but you missed supper.

When that becomes a regular thing, that is not healthy. That's the definition of addiction - obsessively doing something to the point of neglecting other important things. It might not seem like a big deal for a single person, but for someone with a family that expects them to be home for supper, too much of that shit leads to divorce. I'm speaking from experience.

Re:"I wanted to work this weekend"

[FranTaylor]

If you fail, dozens to thousands of employees wont be able to do their job until the problem gets resolved.

if your company is stupid enough to create situations like this, get out, fast

Re:"I wanted to work this weekend"

[Anonymous Coward]

+1 - should be obvious to anyone who doesn't have their head up their own butt

Re:"I wanted to work this weekend"

[JoeMerchant]

Getting "in the groove" is great and all, but I find that when I'm working 50-60 hours a week I'll find myself feeling "in the groove" a lot, then when I look back at what I created during that all work and no play stretch, it's crap - I was in a rut and couldn't see the bigger picture where the solution I was grinding out was not a good fit to the overall problem - it can be a beautiful, error free, maintainable, extensible piece of crap because of tunnel vision that usually sets in during those long productive spells where nobody interrupts you or makes you sit in any boring meetings.

Considering a variety of perspectives is more important to an overall elegant solution than polishing the perfect little cutting diamond.

Re:"I wanted to work this weekend"

[rainmaestro]

This. The standard worker smarter vs work harder dilemma.

I did the whole groove thing when I was in my twenties and just starting out. As I gained experience, it became obvious that the groove is far from ideal. I produce better code when I take frequent short breaks. Get up, stretch, take a quick walk, give your brain time to process everything you've been doing. Then you're in the right mindset to see what's what. So I don't work late, especially on Fridays. If I'm in the middle of a tricky bit and 5:00 hits, I'm gone. By the time Monday rolls around, I know how to proceed because the problem has been rolling around my subconscious for 2.5 days.

I see a few coworkers who work long hours in the groove, and they always seem to be rewriting four hours of work for the third time because they get into the groove, churn it out and a day later realize it isn't gonna work long-term. Meanwhile, if they'd just stopped an hour in and pinged one of their colleagues for a 5-minute sanity check they'd have realized it sooner and saved their evening.

Re:"I wanted to work this weekend"

[Anonymous Coward]

This. It is a mistake to think that sitting in front of monitor and cranking out code for hours on, does not mean productivity. Thinking through the problem and contemplating solution often leads to better results. The only time one may spend long hours is when there is a production issue.

Re:"I wanted to work this weekend"

[Anonymous Coward]

This. It is a mistake to think that sitting in front of monitor and cranking out code for hours on means productivity. Thinking through the problem and contemplating solution often leads to better results. The only time one may spend long hours is when there is a production issue.

Grammar correction :-)

Re:"I wanted to work this weekend"

[cthulhu11]

It's happened to me too, lots of times over the years. I'd typically take comp time the next day.

Re:"I wanted to work this weekend"

[cthulhu11]

Can't believe nobody posted this yet:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8_Kfjo3VjU

Re:"I wanted to work this weekend"

[adhdengineer]

What the hell do you think IT does? Sit around all day playing Quake?

From my experience; you find things that aren't broken then fix them until they are.

Re:"I wanted to work this weekend"

[tehcyder]

Writing software is "creative" in the same way that an accountant making a spreadsheet add up is creative.

Re:"I wanted to work this weekend"

[Anonymous Coward]

FTFS:
"I've never worked a single weekend when I didn't want to"

Employee: "I wanted to work this weekend. I really did"
Interviewer: "Oh, that's good. Why did you want to work this weekend?"
Employee: "Cuz they'd fire my ass otherwise, doofus!"

I wanted to work once on a weekend. I really did. It got me out of driving 6 hours through particularly unattractive and hot country to go to an overwrought wedding of a cousin-in-law I'd never heard of. Never was I more happy to handle the upgrades that were going out that Sunday.

Re:"I wanted to work this weekend"

[brunes69]

Which is exactly what the article said, that the GP ignored, and what I was replying to in my comment. No one was forced to work extra time that they didn't want to do. The GP basically asserted that no one would work extra time unless they were forced. I said, untrue.

Jayson Blair wants to talk

[mveloso]

Your idea of the new york times is a few years behind the curve.

Re:Jayson Blair wants to talk

[Anonymous Coward]

So is yours. The guy hasn't worked for the New York Times for more than 12 years.

athletes abuse drugs

[turkeydance]

and AFTER they make bank say "i shouldn't have" (wiki link). in the same way, Nick took the money. if he Gives It All Back, then we're cool.

You just won't get anywhere in the company

[Anonymous Coward]

No they don't "require" they "encourage" you to work that weekend. And if you don't work that weekend along with all the other things that is "encouraged" to be a good amazonian then you will never be able to move up and will be targeted for "improvement" and eventually fired. But don't worry a H1b will be happy to do your job for less.

Re:You just won't get anywhere in the company

[Anonymous Coward]

WHAM-O, we have a winner.

The macro has colored your cell on the bean counter's spreadsheet BRIGHT RED.

But hey, it's not like we're laboring in a coal mine, right? Inhaling toxic dust and fumes and whatever else? And because your body isn't physically broken and you still have two functioning brain cells left, you don't really need to retire, right? I mean you can continue sitting at your desk basically until the day you drop dead, right? Besides, the dow plunged 500 points today, based on ..... well, it's not really based on much of anything besides delusional fear ...... so in any case you won't be retiring any time soon, and meanwhile the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and we are doing SO INCREDIBLY WELL that we can even seriously consider a shambling mound of ignorance like Donald Trump to have as president to lead us all over the cliff.

I hope you are happy with this new world you have built. Every day I wake up and thank god I won't have to live in it much longer.

Damage control BS

[Anonymous Coward]

Your best defense of predatory employment practices is that you were a bigger asshole in a past company. LIterally fuck the hell off you sorry excuse for a human being!

Dear Nick

[eulernet]

Dear Nick,

I'm very happy to learn that you, the Head of Infrastructure Development at Amazon, have good working conditions at Amazon, but your opinion is absolutely irrelevant, since people being pressured at Amazon are not developers, but people doing physical work.

It's easy to defend your job when you have a comfortable position, but it's also very disrespectful towards people who do *real* manual work, who are forced to follow a fast pace and who are also badly paid.

I had countless death marches in my previous jobs (in videogames), and I know very well how it destroys people (and it took me more than one year to recover).
But death marches cannot compare to physical repetitive fast-pacing tasks.
The body suffers but also questions arise, because the mind is completely available.

As a software engineer, my minds is always busy, so I don't have doubts when I work.
If I had a manual work, I would have plenty of time to wonder why I do a job that I dislike.

I have experienced the Stockholm syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... in a few jobs, where I believed it was my duty to sacrifice myself for the company, so I understand people wanting to show that they can perform better than others.
It's totally normal !

But please, Nick, don't compare your job to the mindless harassing jobs in Amazon.

Re:Dear Nick

[Anonymous Coward]

>But please, Nick, don't compare your job to the mindless harassing jobs in Amazon

Fear not. Amazon will soon take care of complaints about how they treat their warehouse workers by installing robotic replacements and laying them all off. Problem solved.

Surely that will satisfy you. No?

Re:Dear Nick

[PopeRatzo]

a head of infrastructure development at Amazon

It just shows how quickly management can become out of touch. If there's an "impassioned defense" of Amazon's working conditions, wouldn't it be better to hear it from someone who actually has to work for a living? Someone who's not a "head" of anything, but just some poor schmuck in one of the warehouses or a developer a couple of levels below the "head of infrastructure development"?

This sounds like nothing more than Amazon's push-back against all the negative press it's had recently. My guess is that someone in Amazon's public relations department, probably a "head" of public relations, decided to find a slave who's jes' happy to be workin' in the big house to let everyone know how great conditions are on the plantation.

Re:Dear Nick

[Anonymous Coward]

>I have experienced the Stockholm syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... in a few jobs, where I believed it was my duty to sacrifice myself for the company,

Unless you were a captive of the company, not a willing employee, it wasn't the stockholm syndrome, dumbshit.

Re:Dear Nick

[Beeftopia]

The overseer whipping the slaves: "Damn, that one time, my arm got so tired, I didn't know if I could keep going. But I persevered." :)

Re:Dear Nick

[Anonymous Coward]

It would satisfy me. Dehumanizing behavior is a consequence of being too short-sighted to make capital investments in automation. Eventually the amount of slave driving required to stay competitive becomes prohibitively expensive(in employee turnover and babysitting) and people give up on humans and replace them with machines.

When a job is so heavily documented that a minimum wage employee can be paid to do it, very few tasks remain which are still cost effective to pay a human to do.

Re:Dear Nick

[Anonymous Coward]

Wage slavery is essentially equal to captivity dumbshit.

You think people with tons of opportunities stay in abusive relationships? This is the primary argument against "rank and yank".

Re:Dear Nick

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone who's not a "head" of anything, but just some poor schmuck in one of the warehouses or a developer a couple of levels below the "head of infrastructure development"?

Almost nobody in Amazon warehouses is an Amazon employee. They are almost all temps, employed through staffing shell companies. The 20th century "Henry Ford" model was to pay (comparatively) good wages to attract reliable staff, even if the job was not particularly skilled. The 21st century model is that the temps are tagged like cattle and, rather than use positive motivation, they are set strict targets to prevent anyone slacking off. If a temp misses too many targets, or takes few days for illness, or gets injured on the job, Amazon doesn't need to fire them and deal with legal consequences, only to tell the shell company they aren't required any more. He or she could attempt to sue the 'employer' (i.e. the shell company) but how many people in that position could afford to, and what's the point if the shell company has almost no assets anyway?

Re: Dear Nick

[Anonymous Coward]

Slow repeditive jobs are the worst, when it fast paced you don't really have time to think about something other than the next step

Re:Dear Nick

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL at the "abusive relationships" comment...

Only a certain type of woman gets INTO an abusive relationship - i.e. a woman who is stupid enough to like violent men. They then claim that they "didn't know" he was violent, even though every MAN on the planet can see it the first time they lay eyes on him.

Re:Dear Nick

[Anonymous Coward]

More like: "I never had to spend weekends whipping slaves when I didn't want to".

Re:Dear Nick

[Rakarra]

Wage slavery is essentially equal to captivity dumbshit.

I'm laughing at the idea of software dev wage slavery. A decent software developer has perhaps the best work mobility of anyone in the world. You have tons of job opportunities with excellent wages. Now the grunts doing manual labor in Amazon warehouses, that's a different story.

What ridiculous logic

[jtownatpunk.net]

Just because there are worse places to work doesn't make Amazon a good place to work.

Re:What ridiculous logic

[Anonymous Coward]

Flip it around to show how stupid it is. "How can you be happy when there are people happier than you?"

Re:What ridiculous logic

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right, but guess what? This tech CEO thinks Amazon is just fine (I bet Redfin is an awful place to work too): https://www.redfin.com/blog/20...

His arguments: 1) It's okay to abuse people who are paid. 2) Other people have it even worse so stop complaining.

Let me get this straight

[Tough Love]

Manager passionately disagrees with complaints of managers abusing staff, did I get that right?

Re:Let me get this straight

[garbut]

Yup, and his disagreement is based on "other managers abuse too"

Re:Let me get this straight

[PopeRatzo]

Manager passionately disagrees with complaints of managers abusing staff, did I get that right?

Yessiree. Nothing to see here, move along. See how happy all the workers are?

https://youtu.be/CPNaaogT8fs

No sympaty for slef-inflicted problems

[JustNiz]

Seriously I have no sympathy for people that allow themselves to be walked all over, then complain about how their employer destroyed their life.

Y'all just need to grow a pair and remember that employment is a business contract between equals. Next time your employer asks you to do something unfair such as donate a bunch of unpaid overtime or work extremely excessive hours, just fucking say NO. Otherwise just shut up and take it like the bitches you have actively chosen to turn yourselves into.

Re:No sympaty for slef-inflicted problems

[Pro923]

I agree with you, I do... But as a guy who has worked in tech for 20+ years now, there have been so many times where I realize that people can be so smart, yet so stupid at the same time. Specifically, tech people - suckers... So many time I've looked around the room for someone else to share a look of "what the fuck?" with me, but most of the time, no one dares. When they offer people "free pizza" to work past 8:00, I look around for people to say, "Yeah, thanks, but I'll go home now and buy my own $6.99 pizza thanks" - but no one does, and they work, and they eat the pizza like it's some incredible gift.

If everyone were like me, we'd probably get paid more than the sales guys, work less hours and have a hell of a lot more respect. The problem is that your average engineer is a moron. Since most are morons, we're all morons. If I'm the one guy that tells them to "shove the pizza up their ass cause I'm goin home on time", I'll get replaced with a fresh Chinese kid faster than you can say kung pao chicken.

I can say I'm a broken person now... I'm definitely not what I was 15 years ago when I was a smart mofo and ready to take on the world. THe tech industry has brought me to the ground - in so many ways. You can't win... We're all just cogs in a wheel... The industry has been turned into more of a manual labor type of gig, and it sucks.

Re:No sympaty for slef-inflicted problems

[PopeRatzo]

Y'all just need to grow a pair and remember that employment is a business contract between equals.

No, it's not. In late-stage capitalism, employment is more like a monopsony. In fact, most of Amazon's business model is based on monopsony.

Corporate consolidation has created these megacorps, grown to unimaginable size. When an employer reaches a certain size, it can drive down wages and working conditions.

It doesn't have to be only one buyer to be a monopsonistic market.

Re:No sympaty for slef-inflicted problems

[Desler]

Next time your employer asks you to do something unfair such as donate a bunch of unpaid overtime or work extremely excessive hours, just fucking say NO.

And you're going to cover their bills and lost insurance benefits after they get fired?

Re:No sympaty for slef-inflicted problems

[Dutch Gun]

It's really, really hard to do that when you're a young person on your first job, and are just thankful that you're being given a shot to gain some valuable real-world experience. It's also very easy to say that when you've got fifteen or more years of experience, lots of high profile projects under your belt, and can get a job just about anywhere you like with relative ease.

So, when you talk about "equals", you have to consider that some "equals" have much more bargaining power than others. I'm not disagreeing with your sentiment, but I'd suggest that it falls on senior developers to take on some leadership in these sorts of fights against bad managerial practices.

Personally, I still don't get the short-term thinking of forcing insane work hours on programmers or other skilled workers. For myself, I've noticed that my quality of work and productivity per hour drop dramatically when I've worked long hours. Even when I'm working on my own now as an independent developer, I try to limit my hours per day and per week for fear of making bad decisions or writing bad code. It comes back to bite you in the end.

Moreover, forcing long hours on people simply burns them out, meaning you're going to lose your best and hardest-working people in the end. Or at the very least, they'll need a long time to recover, negating any short-term gains. I've seen an entire game development team simply disintegrate at the end of a project after a long, extended death march. The company foolishly sacrificed an entire team for the sake of one project, and the end results weren't even that spectacular. People tend to slog it out to the end, because they want to see their own work through to the finished project, but afterwards, they realize that they never want to be subjected to that again, and find other jobs, many even leaving the industry.

Death marches are nearly always a result of management failure. Either management failed with initial estimates and unrealistic scope, or by failing to make necessary revisions or cuts earlier in the project, when things started falling behind (in other words, making hard decisions). Or worst, they're a callous way to try to squeeze more from less as a matter of economics - pretty much the most idiotic type of short-term thinking imaginable.

Re:No sympaty for slef-inflicted problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely if there's more than one, but only a few, buyers, the market is an oligopsony.

Re:No sympaty for slef-inflicted problems

[quantaman]

Y'all just need to grow a pair and remember that employment is a business contract between equals.

No, it's not. In late-stage capitalism, employment is more like a monopsony. In fact, most of Amazon's business model is based on monopsony.

Corporate consolidation has created these megacorps, grown to unimaginable size. When an employer reaches a certain size, it can drive down wages and working conditions.

It doesn't have to be only one buyer to be a monopsonistic market.

I wonder if this is the case.

Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, they all pay extremely well. But at the same time because of the winner-take-all nature of the market place they take a massive portion of revenue and profits which drives down what their competitors can afford to pay staff.

If they took a smaller portion of total profit wages across the industry, both from them and their competitors, could be higher.

Re:No sympaty for slef-inflicted problems

[PopeRatzo]

Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, they all pay extremely well

Apple pays well as long as you don't count the people who, you know, make their products.

And for all of those companies, you have to look beyond the people who are working at headquarters. Contractors, temps, etc have to be figured into the equation too.

It's not just the tech industry. All across the board, corporate consolidation is the reason there has been such tiny wage growth (actually, contraction when you count inflation). The bottom 2/3 of all workers are making less if you look at real inflation.

Re:No sympaty for slef-inflicted problems

[ezeri]

Apple actually isn't known for paying very well, compared to others. Too many people who just want to work for Apple.

Re: No sympaty for slef-inflicted problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Works for me. As a manager, I'm happy to say I don't have to work over time. YOU do. I'm not replaceable. YOU are. I earn more money in a minute than you ever will in a lifetime. Life is good.

Re:No sympaty for slef-inflicted problems

[Anonymous Coward]

While there's no denying companies abuse their position to make people work overtime without pay, there's also a pay back for staying up late, especially with coworkers. You may get to know people from other departments, you may get closer connection with people that may create new opportunities for you later. Sometimes it's fun to tackle a problem and make things happen, especially together with a close team. Sometimes, it's not just money that matters. Now, if you don't take extra vacation / free time, you are a workaholic or a fool.

If you're broken, realize that companies do not exist to please their employees, but their customers, unless they don't care. Companies definately don't "care", so why should you care for your company? Don't take it seriously and just let go of ideas that don't pan out. They might in the future, but usually, the company is not ready to improve itself.

Most people having good ideas do them in their spare time and may even start new companies. The company you work for don't own your ideas and your initiative.

Re:No sympaty for slef-inflicted problems

[Anonymous Coward]

employment is a business contract between equals.

True when there is full employment. Meaning there are people alive now for whom it has never been true.

Re:No sympaty for slef-inflicted problems

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't it be nice if your insurance were not a factor in your decision?

Re:No sympaty for slef-inflicted problems

[Rakarra]

I agree with you, I do... But as a guy who has worked in tech for 20+ years now, there have been so many times where I realize that people can be so smart, yet so stupid at the same time. Specifically, tech people - suckers... So many time I've looked around the room for someone else to share a look of "what the fuck?" with me, but most of the time, no one dares. When they offer people "free pizza" to work past 8:00, I look around for people to say, "Yeah, thanks, but I'll go home now and buy my own $6.99 pizza thanks" - but no one does, and they work, and they eat the pizza like it's some incredible gift.

You know, it depends on what you're going home too as well. If the only thing you have to look forward to is a couple of hours of mind-numbing Counter-Strike while avoiding annoying roommates, then maybe staying at work to do something intellectually stimulating while saving you the hassle of looking for food is appealing. I did that long ago.

But if you have a family at home that you spend quality time with, suddenly the prospect of spending a late night at work becomes much more of a bad one. Sometimes it's not even an option. When I was starting out I was given a lot of late shifts (without choice) because the other people on my team flat-out told me that they had home responsibilities and I didn't. I thought that was pretty fucking unfair. Fortunately that job didn't last long. Now I pretty much stick to a 40-hour work week. Sometimes there's weekend work, but it's not a regular thing.

Re:No sympaty for slef-inflicted problems

[Rakarra]

So, when you talk about "equals", you have to consider that some "equals" have much more bargaining power than others. I'm not disagreeing with your sentiment, but I'd suggest that it falls on senior developers to take on some leadership in these sorts of fights against bad managerial practices.

Senior developers have to be able to gauge the mood of the company as well. There are a lot of places looking for an excuse to shed their expensive senior staff and go with a younger, hungrier, cheaper, less independent work force.

So basically all we've established here...

[Narcocide]

... is that this guy admits to being completely unqualified to actually comment on what an appropriate work:life balance actually is.

Re:So basically all we've established here...

[deesine]

Having experienced a totally out of balance state, he seems very qualified. Now.

Re:So basically all we've established here...

[Narcocide]

Well that's obviously what he's trying to infer, but I remain skeptical. Its too much like a slave saying his new master is totally ethical because his beatings don't leave marks as often.

We're dealing with an imbalance of power here

[Applehu Akbar]

Here's an interesting case for unionization in tech:
https://michaelochurch.wordpre...
Discuss.

Re:We're dealing with an imbalance of power here

[PopeRatzo]

That's a very interesting article. I'm sorry I called you an idiot yesterday. Clearly, you're not. I apologize.

Re:We're dealing with an imbalance of power here

[Applehu Akbar]

This is my fiftieth year in tech, and whenever the word "union" has come up in the field, workers have reacted to horror stories from Detroit, Chicago and DC, where the imbalance of power was clearly in the opposite direction: graft and featherbedding destroying grand old industries, driving the smoldering remnants of our national productivity away to Asia. What we were not being cognizant of was that there was an earlier time - in the mining camps of the Gilded Age, in meatpacking plants crammed with immigrants fresh from eastern Europe and willing to do anything to survive, in steel mills where nobody cared about working conditions - where the imbalance of power went the other way. That was when the union movement got started.

I'm fortunate to have spent most of my career in times and places where developers had the upper hand over companies in negotiations. You got mistreated at one place, there was always a better job around the corner, and everyone knew it. If the stories coming out about conditions at Amazon and other tech companies are true, today's young people don't have that luxury, and may have no choice but to organize.

Re:We're dealing with an imbalance of power here

[PopeRatzo]

I'm fortunate to have spent most of my career in times and places where developers had the upper hand over companies in negotiations. You got mistreated at one place, there was always a better job around the corner, and everyone knew it.

I'm not a developer, but I spent my 25 years in the workplace under similar circumstances of employees holding the balance of power (it's called "tenure").

I'm afraid the days when a large percentage of US workers had some leverage are over since the industrial unions imploded/were destroyed. I blame union leaders who were too cozy with the elite and Ronald Reagan, mostly, but it was a lot of things.

Either way, the pain is coming for a large percentage of US workers and their families. I'm just glad I retired before it got really bad. Now I just wait for my daughter to finish her Math PhD and then I can go lay in my hammock and play Monster Hunter 4 and let the world go to hell.

Re:We're dealing with an imbalance of power here

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not just quit? Get a new job. Are you really so talentless that you can't find something else to do?

Re:We're dealing with an imbalance of power here

[Uberbah]

from Detroit, Chicago and DC, where the imbalance of power was clearly in the opposite direction: graft and featherbedding destroying grand old industries, driving the smoldering remnants of our national productivity away to Asia.

Wait. You suggest we form unions, then repeat laughable anti-union talking points? AFL-CIO didn't pass NAFTA. Neither Longshoremen nor the Teamsters told GE to offshore their labor. AFSCME didn't tell everyone to start shopping at Wal-Mart, with their cheap crap imported from China.

Re:We're dealing with an imbalance of power here

[Applehu Akbar]

Today, having hung onto my Sub S, I occupy a niche as the IT country doctor in a small rural town. This job involves a certain amount of sadness. I'm the one who has to go out in a snowstorm to tell an 80-year-old widow that her faithful companion of a generation, her Windows XP desktop, is now far too old to upgrade - its HD growing flakier by the month, its Registry spavined from innumerable bad encounters with Home Shopping Network malware, the primordial graphics card throwing random patches of Clan Stuart tartan onto her desktop. I count it a win if I can copy off her lifetime of cruise photographs before it flatlines.

But there are joyful days too, when I get the call that the long-awaited UPS delivery has come and I can set up and start some young family's new Mac, its bootup chime telling us that fresh life has been brought into the world, ready to continue the Circle of Computer Technology.

Re:We're dealing with an imbalance of power here

[Applehu Akbar]

I'm just saying that imbalances of power can go back and forth with time. Unions formed for a reason, and many older industries that could have adapted and survived died for a reason. We must maintain situational awareness and historical perspective.

Re:We're dealing with an imbalance of power here

[Shados]

Pretty much everyone who has an offer for Amazon has offers elsewhere. They're not at the top of selectiveness like Google and Netflix, but they're more selective than the average. So if you can get a job there, you have 3 other offers lined up most of the time.

People pick it to have a big name on their resume or to work on big systems. Then they realize they may have taken on more than they could chew. Also, Amazon's interview process is not very good (its downright terrible), so they DO have quite a few false positive...lots of people in there who shouldn't be there. Those are the ones who get managed out.

The gaming industry is the same but 10x worse, with all the people who want to be "living the dream!". At least Amazon pays well. Non-Valve gaming companies? Not so much.

Re:We're dealing with an imbalance of power here

[PopeRatzo]

But there are joyful days too, when I get the call that the long-awaited UPS delivery has come and I can set up and start some young family's new Mac

That sounds great.

Say, I'm really sorry about teeing off on you yesterday. I was out of line.

Re:We're dealing with an imbalance of power here

[Applehu Akbar]

I was a sysop on bulletin boards (remember those?) once. I still have the meter-thick epidermis, so no problem. I make a certain percentage of intentionally provocative comments here, and I'm always amazed at (1) the number of such comments that just fall unnoticed into the ether and (2) the times that someone will go Chernobyl over some totally ordinary observation.

Re:We're dealing with an imbalance of power here

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, but post-NAFTA, the allure of off-shoring wouldn't have been as great had the cost of a second entire management structure not needed to be borne. And that's the problem with unions. Initially they address the problem of the power imbalance between management and labor, but they eventually accrue power to themselves, siphoning off their members' productivity.

In many industries, the union is really only be needed for finite intervals to correct an issue or set of issues and then should disband until needed again. Permanent unions can become as much a threat to their members as management.

Software developers don't dislike unions because they fear everything about unions. They just fear that after the initial benefits are realized, all the crap will start to accrue and they won't be able to get rid of them.

Re:We're dealing with an imbalance of power here

[Uberbah]

And that's the problem with unions. Initially they address the problem of the power imbalance between management and labor, but they eventually accrue power to themselves, siphoning off their members' productivity.

More laughable talking points, as worker productivity has done nothing but rise since the 70's, and unions are inherently invested in the profitability the business they are in.

In many industries, the union is really only be needed for finite intervals to correct an issue or set of issues and then should disband until needed again.

Unions will be needed as long as bosses and capitalists are afflicted with greed. Are you telling me that they stopped being greedy when Reagan was elected?

They just fear that after the initial benefits are realized, all the crap will start to accrue and they won't be able to get rid of them.

Crap like: higher wages, greater benefits, and the right to be fired with cause, rather than without. Oh, the horrors!

Re:We're dealing with an imbalance of power here

[hlee]

I'm on the side of moving software engineering towards a Profession rather than Unionization.

Right or wrong my impression of unions are that they are catered towards less skilled labor, while professions require a lot more skill that can be encapsulated by many certifications. Lawyers with their bar and accountants with their CPA are examples. I've no doubt many of us can easily come up with a fairly basic curriculum for basic certification - take for example Secure Coding practices. Given how diverse and specialized a lot of our work can be, I imagine a lot of esoteric certificates can be devised. Certifications would likely need to be renewed from time to time as well, considering how quickly technologies and techniques evolve. A profession centered around good education benefits everyone.

Re:We're dealing with an imbalance of power here

[Anonymous Coward]

TL:DR for parent:

I'm not a developer, but I spent my 25 years in the workplace under similar circumstances of employees holding the balance of power (it's called "tenure").

I had things good back in my day.

I'm afraid the days when a large percentage of US workers had some leverage are over since the industrial unions imploded/were destroyed. I blame union leaders who were too cozy with the elite and Ronald Reagan, mostly, but it was a lot of things.

You youngns are getting so fucked, my generation helped to cause it, but I share no blame nor guilt.

Either way, the pain is coming for a large percentage of US workers and their families. I'm just glad I retired before it got really bad. Now I just wait for my daughter to finish her Math PhD and then I can go lay in my hammock and play Monster Hunter 4 and let the world go to hell.

FUCK YOURS; GOT MINE.

This concludes a exhibition of the apathy of the ruling classes.

Re:We're dealing with an imbalance of power here

[PopeRatzo]

You youngns are getting so fucked, my generation helped to cause it, but I share no blame nor guilt.

I was twenty something when Reagan left power, and a broke-ass post-doc looking for a job. The erosion of the middle class and the efforts to destroy the political and economic power of working people was already well underway by the time I entered the work force. And no, I didn't vote for Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton or George W. Bush. So fuck yourself.

This concludes a exhibition of the apathy of the ruling classes.

If you think a retired English professor = "the ruling class", you've got a lot to learn about the world.

Re:We're dealing with an imbalance of power here

[Applehu Akbar]

One nice feature that industrial unions offered was training, taking workers through a series of steps from apprentice to journeyman to master. On each level there was a certain set of skills required, and the organization served as a focus for getting each worker to his (yes, that was the only pronoun in those days) maximum level of competency. Certainly, after WW II and through the Fifties and Sixties the tipping of power toward big-city unions led to those dreaded excesses that today's young people would hate to see happen in tech. We've all heard the stories about conferences in Eastern cities where the jobsite work rules won't allow an exhibitor to move her own chair ten feet across the hall. But in organizing for the modern age, tech workers have an opportunity to learn from the mistakes of the past and do it better. We can concentrate on the advantages while avoiding those Rust Belt excesses.

Note that your source is the same Michael Church as my source, writing a couple of years earlier on the topic. In his latest column there was no attempt to set aside "professionals" as being somehow more magic than regular organized workers. The difference is what, exactly? Professionals have codes of ethics, can't be "fired" in the ordinary sense, and generally operate in small groups from their own partnerships, which have a life independent from the clients they serve. Perhaps he has realized since then that most developers don't have the same interests as neurosurgeons, that not everyone wants to run his own complicated little business that has to deal with the client as an independent bargaining unit. Furthermore, such an arrangement might not even increase employment in the field, because many companies want to operate their own staffs of tech personnel under their own rules. So now Church seems to have relaxed his stance and come to the conclusion that unions are a better, more inclusive type of organization for tech workers than trying to form a new profession.

Amazon cyborgs

[Anonymous Coward]

The answer is simple, upgrade the worker to cyborgs & kidnap their families. There's no reason Mr. Bezo's shouldn't get 68 more hours a week out of his workers.

Amazon has a problem, but how big is ??

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Amazon probably does have some issues with how it treats employee's. maybe not everywhere, but is this a isolated or regional problem? Or is the problem across the Amazon system? Of course Amazon will defend itself, I am not sure if many companies would admit what they have been accused of in articles from obviously ex Amazon employee's who may have a grudge of some kind to seek out. Frankly, I am not surprised if Amazon did have a very high performance expectations given the kind of business it is in. Does this mean everyone is unhappy? Probably not, otherwise Amazon would have a huge turnover and a much more public negative image of working there. I know some really lazy people who think working 4 hours straight is against the law. Their work ethic sucks and I can see them talking dirt about Amazon if they could even get a job there in the first place.

Re:Amazon has a problem, but how big is ??

[Anonymous Coward]

The culture is deliberately and forcefully unified across all Amazon operations, which gives a clue to whether it's "isolated" or "global".

Systemic in all large software places

[Anonymous Coward]

Lockheed Martin does the same thing. Constantly. There are actually 5 hour 'gate' periods beyond 40 that is expected to be unpaid regardless of OT appproval beyond 45. Typically OT isn't paid unless you are going over 80 that week and only if "the program still has overhead". If you don't follow the group you get lower performance ratings regardless if you perform 5x real work vs others. Sleeping bags and such are common place beyond SCIFs because they can't be seen.

I Don't Know How This Happens

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless they are paid hourly with overtime. Then I'd say OK to however many hours the boss wants. But salaried? As a programmer? Nope. Maybe to fix something that broken once in a while, but not on a regular basis. Programming isn't a process that must be completed once it's started.

I'm proud to say I've never had this sort of problem. If I did, I'd just skate to the next gig. My skills are valuable to a lot of people.

Boo Hoo, You CAN Give Back, KILL YOURSELF

[Anonymous Coward]

If you truly stand by your written words then kill yourself.

Simple logic.

Will you?

NO!

Coward and Liar! No Master Commander U.

Hmm

[cascadingstylesheet]

I've seen so many two-minutes hates in the last few years that I don't know who to believe.

It's easy to see what this is about

[p51d007]

This is about saying how bad working conditions are at Amazon, Google, Apple and all the "big" companies, in an attempt to FORCE them into a union. The government will start screwing with them to get them into a union. Once unionized, all that millions in campaign donations will filter back into the hands of greedy politicians.

Re:It's easy to see what this is about

[iggymanz]

and the workers will be happier and have better lives from this politician greasing? maybe mostly a good thing?

Not new for tech but it does need to change

[justcauseisjustthat]

This is not new for tech companies, they will drive you and drive you.
Without regulations regarding hours worked and after hours email, phone, etc it will never change.

Executive will not change as long as they can cut staffing and increase their pay.

Re:Not new for tech but it does need to change

[Anonymous Coward]

You guys really do need to realize that there are more companies out there than Facebook, Amazon, etc. or any publicly traded company and they all pay just as well. This goes for any field, but especially IT and CS related fields. Bitching about places like Amazon and Google is like bitching about Wal-Mart with regards to a minimum wage job. There are plenty more fish in the sea...

Well of course he would say that

[BringMyShuttle]

> citing a long, passionate response in disagreement from Nick Ciubotariu, a head of infrastructure development at Amazon. Interestingly, Ciubotariu — whose take on Amazon's work-life balance ("I've never worked a single weekend when I didn't want to")
> head of infrastructure development
> head
> ("I've never worked a single weekend when I didn't want to"
> head
> head
> work-life balance

Big difference between being a grunt on low wage but a life outside of work to look forward to and being a well-compensated "I'd die for my company" manager.

I only have one thing to say

[Anonymous Coward]

I only have one thing to say: It seems that there are a great many idiots in tech, a group apparently made up of those people stupid enough to insist that their employees work far more than 40 hours, and also those employees that respond to such idiocy in the affirmative.

Alright, I have more than one thing to say, you caught me. I cannot comprehend why anyone would think this is a good idea. Employees working this much are not that much more productive - certainly not in the long run. If you're talking about coding, code quality will be an issue. I guess there are sadists and masochists all over, and I guess they tend to find each other.

Have at it folks... only if it happens to me, you can expect union-organizing to begin immediately.

I ended up in a hospital hooked up to an EKG

[Anonymous Coward]

After working virtually non-stop to hit 5 simultaneous, had to be done, client projects (we weren't short staffed when we committed, then lost 2 people).

In reality, it didn't have to be done. I just thought I could be superman. Then I went to the hospital and realized none of it was worth that.

Re:Amazon is GNAA heaven, we fuck ass in the bathr

[Barny]

We just leave him go. Whenever he misses his meds he tends to do this.

Enabler?

[Anonymous Coward]

The person leading the death march is an enabler?
Sorry you are the architect.
You are the one saying my people can do it.
You can not even admit after the fact you are at fault.
I would hope you took care of your people. But I assume it was off to bigger and better.

Years ago

[Anonymous Coward]

Years and years ago (Hint mid 90s) I worked for one company for 10 months.
In those 10 months I DID take 2 weeks vacation, and the company was closed the usual Holidays (Memorial, 7/4, labor, Thanksgiving Christmas and New Years). During that time, including that time off, I averaged 67.5 hours/week in the office (Yes, that includes the vacation weeks!)
I gained a massive amount of weight (3 meals of crap at the office NOT paid for by the boss), Of the team of 8 people there were 2 divorces, one attempted suicide, one person became alcoholic, and another was doing serious drugs. I rarely got to see my newborn daughter (ages from just over a month old to just under a year)

Getting out of there for a 20% pay cut was one of the best moves I ever made. I thank my wife for saying "Get out of there, we don't need the cash at the expense of you life"
 

Re:Years ago

[Anonymous Coward]

The last company I worked for was worse than that.

4 weeks vacation but they would never approve more than 5 days of it and only 1 to 2 days at a time. Even then they would call you in to work on those days and there was no way to get them back if you were approved and you ended up working them.

Averaged 80hr weeks over a 2 year span! No week was less than 65hr. No raises, however the quarterly meetings were all about the billions of euros they were making. As well as the CEO taking multi million euro bonuses. (American side of a european company)

The company had been sued more than once for violations federal employment law and always settled out of court.

The insurance company started raising the rates due to the high numbers of heart attacks, stress, hyper tension, etc, etc.

The kicker was when they laid the team off to outsource it to India. They made loads of money outsourcing the Government "No Outsource" contracts.

But hay, I got a severance package and to get it all I had to do was sign a contract that stated I would not report any of there illegal activities.

We Deserve It

[Anonymous Coward]

Who fought for the 40 hour work week?
Who fought for vacation time?
Who fought for benefits, like health insurance?

UNIONS

We have all participated in the demonization of unions and the laws destroying worker rights. Now we are reaping what has been sown.

Re: We Deserve It

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn right. And pretty sad, really.

Re:NYT really want to fight the Wasthingon Post eh

[Khyber]

"Kids, if you think these are bad work schedules, try working in the oil industry and deploying to Alaska or an oil derrick."

Got some news for you, since you obviously haven't done this kind of work.

60 hour weeks. You stay on-rig for 6 months, and you're off for 6 months. You get about $45-60K.

Try again when you've actually done the job. 6 months here in the Gulf of Mexico off Corpus Christi.

As an ex-Amazonian

[Anonymous Coward]

I just laugh when I read Nick's inept, emotional non-rebuttal - it's pathetic really and wrong. The guy's in denial. The NYT piece accurately captures not only data points on employee abuse, but also the culture that leads to them.

Re:NYT really want to fight the Wasthingon Post eh

[Anonymous Coward]

And considering the rapacious profits (with government subsidies) the oil industry makes, workers like you are being ripped off badly, too.

For that kind of work, dangerous work, people should be making enough to live *very* well for the 12 months, working those 6. I'd say at least double.

One injustice does not excuse the other.

Captcha: galling

One court believes

[teknosapien]

that a person can be worked to death

http://www.phillymag.com/busin...

Amazon tried to recruit me

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazon tried to recruit me. Their recruiters blatantly lied to me and tried to have me fly to the site on short notice. When I told them to go to hell, that I would not fly anywhere on short notice my file was turned over to another recruiter who was much nicer to me but still scary. I don't know anything about working at Amazon because I did not follow through with the interviews but I do know they were not comfortable to deal with.

Re:NYT really want to fight the Wasthingon Post eh

[Karmashock]

I have done this kind of work actually. I've basically lived at the office sometimes for weeks on end. Going home every other day or just going home to sleep and shower. There's a little motel near the office building and I've gone there more than a few times just because I can't deal with it. I've had people in sleeping bags in the office a few times.

Let us be adults here for a moment. Adults can make their own choices. If you don't want to work for the company... Don't. No one is forcing you to do it. Quit. No one will blame you. It just wasn't for you. Some people can hack it in some industries and some people cannot. If you can't hack it... Leave.

As to pay... the Amazon people are well paid.

Amazon has already addressed this... the people we're talking about exist in a competitive work environment. If Amazon is not offering a competitive wage and people don't want to work for amazon... then they can go work for someone else.

This is high demand labor. They can work wherever they want.

The NYTs wants to fight the Washington Post. I'm quite certain this is just GAME ON. Why they think they can win a fight like that is beyond me but who knows with these people.

The NYTs has been shedding credibility, market share, and copious amounts of money for decades. Good luck.

Re:NYT really want to fight the Wasthingon Post eh

[Khyber]

You have zero clue about the benefits package, I see.

It beats just about any other medical coverage you can possibly get, until you start making more than a million bucks a year.

And all your expenses are typically paid on-rig anyways.

Monopoly

[Anonymous Coward]

No one has even mentioned the fact that Amazon is a monopoly and needs to be broken up. Lots of similarities between 1900-1910 and 2000-2010 - Robber Barons=IT Barons